Blackfoot wrote:Giants can give 30 year old Cespedes a seven year deal, 126 million I think.

Haha, turnabout is fair play there.

Although Zeets did single-handedly turn around the NLCS and secure a 2nd World Series for SF, so money well spent there. The problem with Zito was making him a #1 guy and expecting him to deliver W's in a 4 year span completely devoid of offense. Zeets will forever be remembered as a loser in SF because he bears the unfortunate cross of embodying a rebuild; not unlike Monta Ellis.

I still can't wait for the G's to sign Cespedes though. They'll have to compete with the Yankees, Rangers, Dodgers, and Bosox... But Cespedes, unfortunately for Oakland, is too good to play his prime out in green and gold. It'll be interesting to see how soon Beane trades him in for a package of prospects. I'll give you Gary Brown, Chris Stratton, and Brandon Belt for him.

The beauty of having the best stadium in baseball means having a constantly competitive team with no fear of gutting the vital organs every 4 seasons. The A's need a stadium before they can hope to be consistent like the big boys.

Blackfoot wrote:Nah, Giants will probably suck in three years. Hell, they are wildly mediocre this year. With a mediocre farm seems like the Giants are destined for 500 ball for a bit.

Nope, one more bat and we easily take the division for the next 3+ seasons (including this one) - admittedly, it feels like we (Giants fans, writers, etc...) have been chanting this for several years now, but I still believe that it's true. Beltran could have been the answer (for a while), but we had a lot of dead money at the time and purged ourselves of the 2010 leftovers that just couldn't match their performances from the WS year.

It takes a special type of hitter to put up AS numbers at the plate in AT&T Park. I'm not sure we'll ever really see a guy approach 40 HR in a Giants uni for a long time. So we need a well-rounded, balanced order, but that creates a very delicate ecosystem - one or two major injuries could upset that balance and turn a season into a failure quickly.

Panda has been activated off a long DL stretch, in which we played some of our worst ball. We just went 3-7 in our last ten, are still only 3.5 games back in the division, and still have 18 games before we hit the AS break. I don't see us getting much worse than this over then next 5 seasons - particularly, as 32 pointed out, for a team that is actually willing to spend money - and it isn't even all that bad.

Some Giants fans (nobody on here) need to stop acting like bandwagoners they are and pretend that this isn't the first time they've actually followed a MLB team before. Stop listening to the "pundits" because we are fine... for now. Seven game win streak likely puts us in the driver's seat in the division - or - winning something like 12 of 18 probably does as well.

Giants will be stuck with middling to bad pitching for the year and their offense is slightly above average. Average defense. Bad baserunning.

Diamondbacks are better in most every facet, they win the division this year. Giants reign is over I believe. Besides, no team is "we don't rebuild, we reload." Only the Yankees of old were that way. Every team goes through rebuilding phases. Giants are going to start theirs soon.

Not likely. Crick & Blackburn are set to take over Zito & Vogey's spots, Timmy can be a decent 5 if he quits using his FB like it goes 96. The Giants are .500 because Sabean is dancing dangerously close to his budget and didn't anticipate losing Pagan for the year. That's an enormous blow; his move from the 5-hole back to the lead off spot single-handedly turned around the team last year. Pence knocked in 45 RBI's hitting in the low .200's after the trade; that's a credit to Pagan and Scutaro at the top of the order. Without Pagan, Posey and Pence are hitting with nobody on base.

But the bottom line is that pitching always wins and the Giants have great pitching. We're used to the lame steam media chirping about how overrated the rotation is, how Philly or LA or whoever has the best pitching in baseball, yadayadayada. Hater's gonna hate, but in the end, they can all kiss the rings.

A lead-off hitter puts this team back in front of the NL West by 6 games. And unlike the A's, this team isn't a seller at the deadline.

Not sure why you think the A's are sellers, but whenever the A's are in contention they are definitely buyers.

But Giants run differential is -14, the pitching has been really bad, and the hitting won't be able to overcome. Giants just aren't that good of a team this year. And will likely not be that good next year, or the year after that.

I'd the Giants chances of making the post season this year is definitely a "not likely." Finishing about 3-4 games behind the Dbacks.

Edit: I will say one thing, you are living on reputation if you think the Giants have good pitching.